which plays a
strangely small part in the Arthurian romances generally. This would
of itself give a fair presumption that the Tristram story is more
purely, or at any rate more directly, Celtic than the rest. But it so
happens that in the love of Tristram and Iseult, and the revenge and
general character of Mark, there is also a suffusion of colour and
tone which is distinctly Celtic. The more recent advocates for the
Celtic origin of romance in general, and the Arthurian legend in
particular, have relied very strongly upon the character of the love
adventures in these compositions as being different from those of
classical story, different from those of Frankish, Teutonic, and
Scandinavian romance; but, as it seems to them, like what has been
observed of the early native poetry of Wales, and still more (seeing
that the indisputable texts are older) of Ireland.

A discussion of this kind is perhaps more than any other _periculosae
plenum opus aleae_; but it is too important to be neglected. Taking the
character of the early Celtic, and especially the Irish, heroine as it
is given by her champions--a process which obviates all accusations of
misunderstanding that might be based on the present writer's
confession that of the Celtic texts alone he has to speak at
second-hand--it seems to me beyond question that both the Iseults,
Iseult of Ireland and Iseult of Brittany, approach much nearer to this
type than does Guinevere, or the Lady of the Lake, or the damsel
Lunete, or any of Arthur's sisters, even Morgane, or, to take earlier
examples, Igraine and Merlin's love. So too the peculiar spitefulness
of Mark, and his singular mixture of tolerance and murderous purpose
towards Tristram[55] are much more Celtic than Anglo-French: as indeed
is the curious absence of religiosity before noted, which extends to
Iseult as well as to Tristram. We have no trace in Mark's queen of the
fact or likelihood of any such final repentance as is shown by
Arthur's: and though the complete and headlong self-abandonment of
Iseult is excused to some extent by the magic potion, it is of an
"all-for-love-and-the-world-well-lost" kind which finds no exact
parallel elsewhere in the legend. So too, whether it seem more or less
amiable, the half-coquettish jealousy of Guinevere in regard to
Lancelot is not Celtic: while the profligate vindictiveness
attributed to her in _Sir Launfal_, and only in _Sir Launfal_, an
almost undoubtedly Celtic offshoot